


the only proof of life, they gave

by mollivanders



Series: second chances [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14600502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: “I’m – ” she caught her breath in the cold and swallowed hard. “I’m okay. Take it back. You’ll freeze without your coat.”“Youwerefreezing to death,” he said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. It was enough to make her face him, sitting up and drawing her arms around her as the blankets slid off her once more. She sat there a breath longer, as if steeling herself, and then pushed herself back toward the wall, making a space beside her.Understanding met him before her words and suddenly all he could hear was the pounding of his heart; a rushing sound in his ears as he tried to listen.“Okay,” she said, and if she was shivering from nerves or cold she’d never tell, “then bring your blankets over here. We’ll freeze together.”





	the only proof of life, they gave

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ta-dala for the Holiday Gift Fic giveaway with the prompt of 'bedsharing, kissing/cuddling, established relationship'. I hope two out of three is okay! I had a devil of a time thinking of an established relationship context and then got inspired to add this to the 'second chances' series. 
> 
> Title comes from The Horrible Crowes' Ladykiller.

The days after his recovery blur into swift succession as the Alliance sends him out on mission after mission, unable to spare even the most bedraggled of soldiers as they work to keep ahead of Imperial reconnaissance. He doesn’t see Jyn for most of those days, but between missions and stolen sleep he spots her in the hallways, her step still cautious amidst all these strangers.

Despite that – he can’t help thinking she looks almost happy.

It’s not until they both land a mission to Corellia that calls on Jyn’s old underworld contacts that he really gets a chance to talk to her.

+

“You don’t mind the left one?” Jyn asked, tossing her pack onto a pile of blankets that passes for a bed in this safe house. She had a sightline on the main – only – entrance and he nodded in agreement. His pile of blankets is across from hers, backed against a sidewall.

“Check the flue,” he said, pointing at the old-fashioned fireplace. There weren’t many places in the Core that still used fossil-based energy sources, but here in the poorest quarter of the capital city, he wasn’t surprised to find appliances older than the Empire. Much older. They wouldn’t be able to use the fireplace without attracting attention to this supposedly abandoned lodging, but it was still an access point, however unlikely.

“It’s shut,” she said, finishing her sweep of the room. The room came up clean for bugs and she tossed the scanner on her blankets. “So we’re stuck here until Ogaf contacts us.”

It was a statement of fact but the irritation in her voice was evident. Whoever Ogaf was to her, he was clearly _not_ at the top of her list of preferred underworld contacts – although, Cassian thought, he didn’t really know what the quality at the _top_ of such a list would look like. As a spy he used the criminal underworld when it served the Alliance’s purposes, but it was always an exchange between strangers who never planned to meet again, facilitated by cold hard credits. He tended to treat all criminals with the same degree of deeply skeptical reliance.

(Even, he acknowledged, Jyn – at first.)

Now, his sentiments were as far removed from those early days as it was possible.

“We should get some sleep,” he said, and then, looking around the room again, swallowed his nerves. There was a bowl on a table on the other side of the room, which wasn’t that far away, and the fireplace. The whole room had to be less than forty square meters all around – a tight fit even by Alliance standards – and lit only by a table lamp growing dimmer every moment. With all that, there was only room for three paces between his pile of blankets and Jyn’s.

Rationally, he knew he’d hardly be imposing on her, or her on him, when they didn’t have any other options – but another part of his brain was going haywire trying not to think about it at all.

“We can’t light a fire with the flue closed,” she said, frowning as she shook out her blankets and crawled under them. “Ogaf better come soon.”

In the deepening gloom, Cassian couldn’t agree more.

+

He woke in the middle of the night to the sound of Jyn’s violently chattering teeth. He wrenched himself away from a hazy dream – someplace warm, bright, and heady – and quickly awake towards a harsh alternative, his eyes adjusting to the dark. Across the room, Jyn was curled up in a tight ball, knees tucked to her chest and back towards him as she struggled in some nightmarish dream. She’d kicked her blankets off and despite how much she was shivering, she still wasn’t awake.

Lurching into a roll, he quietly crossed the space between them to pull her blankets up around her abdomen again. She could freeze in these temperatures, even with the blankets, and now that he was awake, he could tell the insulation in this safe house wasn’t worth bantha fodder.

The shivering didn’t stop but she shifted into a tighter ball, curling into herself as her body tried to recover heat, and something in him shifted.

To hell with it.

They’d both gone to sleep in their heaviest coats, but Jyn didn’t exactly have a lot of choices. She’d also been adamant against accepting charity from him – when they’d gone to Jedha, he assumed she’d stolen the clothes she’d worn, and now that she was with the Rebellion again, apparently wouldn’t stoop to stealing from her now-comrades. It wasn’t like they’d had time to stop at a clothing depot either, and so she’d made do with the same heavier jacket she’d worn to Jedha.

His heavy coat came off easily and the cold hit him a heartbeat later. His breath quickly fogged in the dark beside him but it was easy to drape the coat over Jyn and hope against hope she wouldn’t wake to throw it off and back at him, only that she’d slip into a less violent dream born from the cold.

Slowly, her breathing evened out and if it wasn’t perfect, he could only be glad she wasn’t going to freeze to death. As he moved to inch back towards his pile of blankets though, she suddenly stilled under her heavier bedding, something about it dragging her out of sleep instead of deeper into it.

“Cassian?”

Her voice was a thin question in the dark and he stopped, caught in the act.

“Jyn?”

She shifted under the pile of blankets, blinking fully awake.

“I’m – ” she caught her breath in the cold and swallowed hard. “I’m okay. Take it back. You’ll freeze without your coat.”

“You _were_ freezing to death,” he said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. It was enough to make her face him, sitting up and drawing her arms around her as the blankets slid off her once more. She sat there a breath longer, as if steeling herself, and then pushed herself back toward the wall, making a space beside her.

Understanding met him before her words and suddenly all he could hear was the pounding of his heart; a rushing sound in his ears as he tried to listen.

“Okay,” she said, and if she was shivering from nerves or cold she’d never tell, “then bring your blankets over here. We’ll freeze together.”

+

The blankets weren’t wide enough for them to both sleep on their backs and they’d quickly given up the pretense of avoiding contact. After some shuffling – including Jyn’s elbow shoved into his stomach with muffled apologies and him trying not to breathe directly in her face – they’d settled into an easy truce of shared space. She faced him with her back to the wall, an arm curled under the thin pillow.

“Do this often?” she asked when he caught himself staring at her, and even though there was mirth to the question he heard the genuine query behind it.

They knew so little of their lives _before_. It had seemed unnecessary, and irrelevant to the _now_. He hadn’t had much to speak of, or much that he wanted to speak of. He knew more about her than she did of him, but even still, most of what he knew of her past could only be traced back to her file. The Alliance kept even less on him, in the event of counterespionage, even if Jyn had been daring enough to hack into his official file.

(She might have done, once. Not now.)

“No,” he said quietly, unable to look away from her gaze. She was shorter than him and somehow that still mattered here, lying side by side on a pile of worn blankets. Her eyes flickered up across his face as he sought a simple answer to a layered question. “I never made the time,” he explained quietly. “Never really wanted to.”

“And Kay isn’t much for sharing body heat,” she answered quietly, but her voice was still serious. He felt the corners of his eyes crinkle and let himself relax a fraction.

“No,” he agreed, “and I wouldn’t give him my coat either.”

“Yes you would,” she said and his breath caught as she shifted closer. She moved to cup his cheek with a gloved hand and then froze, catching herself before his eyes fell shut, hoping against hope. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and wondered if it was loud enough for her to hear or if he was just about to die from some heart defect the Alliance doctors hadn’t caught. Maybe both, if she touched him. “If you thought it would help.”

Softly, so cautiously he thought he would burst from the waiting, her hand finally fluttered to his cheek and despite himself, his eyes flew open.

She was even closer now, and she wasn’t looking at his eyes. Breathing seemed highly unimportant as he took a wild gamble and just as cautiously as she had touched him, slid an arm around her waist, hoping desperately she wasn’t going to storm out into the cold.

He heard a sharp intake of breath – from himself or her, he couldn’t be sure – and then his thoughts buzzed to static as she kissed him, a kiss with no prologue and no epilogue that burned him from inside.

“ _Jyn_.”

(A thousand stolen glances, a galaxy of hope, and he forgot it all as she came back to him.)

Blankets tangled around them as she looped her leg around his waist, shutting off his brain and letting time run loose. They were going to live forever, defeat the Empire, build a monument at this safe house, and never worry about heating again.

She eventually broke away, catching her breath as she leaned over him, linking their hands together. He arched up, stealing another kiss and drawing her closer for a moment, before she dropped her forehead to his and licked her lips, trying to find words.

(Never easy for her, he knew, in moments like this.)

“Cassian,” she started, and he tightened his hands in hers, “I’m – ” She took another breath. “I never made the time either,” she said, and it took him a second to thread her comment into context as she chewed at her lip. “But – ” she paused, taking a breath and locking eyes with him before darting away again nervously, “I want to now. With you.”

His heart was definitely going to burst, and this was the last thing he was going to remember, and that was almost fine except that he was pretty sure this was the part of his life that was missing, between duty and principle and commitment – something built around hope in his hands.

Words scrambled from him, leaving him adrift in the most critical of moments, and he leaned up on one arm, reaching to tuck a lock of escaped hair back behind her ear as he found his answer. Drawing her courage, she looked back at him again.

“I’m here,” he said quietly, “for – ” he paused, gathering himself, “I want that time. With you.”

They _weren’t_ going to live forever, the Empire was an uphill endless battle, and the safe house would crumble – but he could offer this, if nothing else. He could offer all he had.

(If he knew her at all, she’d steal more for the both of them.)

But the burning look on her face, he was suddenly sure, was all the answer she could give now. He’d seen echoes of that look in battle, and in tearful reunions, and in victory, but this was for him alone. It was a moment caught in amber as she leaned down to kiss him again, his hands coming to her face as they fell back into their makeshift bed. Whatever else he might have said or thought was lost, dissipated to a joyous chance set against all the horrors that had come before.

(He’d take every single second chance they got – and so would she.)

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladytharen](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr if you want to say hi!


End file.
